


take me to the rooftops

by LeagueOfWonder



Category: Disney - All Media Types, Disney Princesses, Tangled (2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeagueOfWonder/pseuds/LeagueOfWonder
Summary: “I am just as imprisoned here as I was there. I got three days of freedom, Eugene. I want more.”Or, Rapunzel and Eugene decide it's time for an adventure
Relationships: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider & Rapunzel, Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43





	take me to the rooftops

Rapunzel could feel the slowly dawning realization creeping up on her at the most inconvenient moments. She would be sitting at the table with the people who for the past few months she had practiced calling “Mother” and “Father” in her head on repeat. Her back would be ramrod straight, her eyes demurely focused on her plate, the conversation around her light but not strained and she would think—is this?—and then she would stop. Halt the thought in its tracks. It is not worth thinking about.

Still, her eyes would linger on the guards on the edges of her world, who stood silent beside the doors of every room. She would notice the watchfulness of her maids, who saw every part of her and dictated what she should wear and how she should appear to the world.

She absorbed the books on politics and history and family lineage and rhetoric and thought “I am being taught what to say. These are lessons in what they want me to think the world is.” and thought—is this?—no, it cannot be. It is not. It is not worth thinking about.

When her maids had left for the evening and she was safely ensconced in her bed for the evening, the guards deposited outside the door, as usual, she would slip from her bed when all was quiet and tiptoe to the window. Outside, there was the world. Outside, she would look down and down on all the people spread out below and up and up at all the beautiful stars whose workings she knew so intimately, who she had loved all her life and had tracked and named and given stories to.

Here were old friends. Here were memories, looking down on her from the skies. Here was a familiar feeling, looking down at the world. At once above it and removed from it. An observer only, who could dream of what was below and what the world was like, but still was never quite sure.

Sometimes, in those evenings, she would think about the guards outside her door. Once, she had tried to leave during the night, to take a walk, perhaps, or go to the library. Instead, she was directed to go back to bed. The looks in the eyes of the guards had caused her to turn sharply close the door and cry, but only for a moment. Is this—? No. It is not worth thinking about.

When she watched outside her window, she thought about Eugene sometimes, sleeping in some other remote part of the castle. He would have the skills to take himself out across the vast plains of the rooftop, up and over the eyes of the guards, and spirit himself away from the castle without anyone ever knowing he had gone. She wanted those skills, perhaps more than she ever had before. Is this—?

Eugene was the one who had first told her, in the midst of a fit of desperation to make her understand why Mother wasn’t worth her tears so many months later. “She wasn’t your mother. You weren’t her daughter. She was a jailer. You were a prisoner. She was using you, Rapunzel.”

No one had said it quite like that before. And it hadn’t come up since. But Rapunzel thought about those words quite frequently these days. Jailer. Prison. Mothers and daughters. Being used. She thought of them when she was officially named heir. She thought of them when the woman she practiced calling mother hugged her tight and asked about her day and her thoughts and her life, but winced sometimes when Rapunzel said the wrong thing, even when Rapunzel had no idea what she had done wrong.

A week ago, she had gone to Eugene. She knew that she had seemed wild in that moment. She felt wild. Her eyes were wide, her hands practically vibrating. The cinched waist of her skirt was pulling at her lungs and her breath was coming too fast. She thought there might have been unshed tears in her eyes, but she was not sure. Eugene had looked alarmed. She knew that.

“Eugene. Could you take me to the rooftops?”

He had grinned. “Of course, your highness.” The grin had seemed stretched and wrong. His eyes showed concern and the happy wrinkles around his mouth were absent. 

Rapunzel could have screamed, but more out of joy than anything else when Eugene had taken her a secret way, out of sight of the guards. It involved running and hiding and jumping and perhaps a bit more danger than anyone else would have approved of. That was alright with Rapunzel. They were on the roof in a matter of minutes. 

The expanse was vast and empty, unwatched. Her shoulders eased and if her breath was still a little fast, well, there was always the dress to blame. Eugene still held a cautious hand to her waist and kept an eye on where the roof ended and open air began, but that was expected. Rapunzel did not mind. She liked the feeling of his hand on her shoulder, of his warmth against her back. Perhaps she did not mind because she was also eyeing the open air with something more like delight, a prospect that scared her, way deep down inside in the tiny part of her that acknowledged where her thoughts were in that moment. 

When they went back after almost an hour on that roof, Rapunzel had calmed. She stayed in that heady feeling for the rest of the day, but found to her disappointment that it took only an hour of breakfast the next morning for her ease with the world to fade back into the nothingness it had once been.

Is this—?

Yes. It is.

Rapunzel rarely had time to herself. Never was she left alone in Eugene’s company, though they spent hours of their day together. She had found herself wanting to come closer to him in the past. The propriety that kept feet of space between them seemed like an ocean sometimes, and she could see the same desire in his eyes. The guards’ eyes and the maids’ eyes and the mother’s and the father’s eyes kept them apart. 

Eugene was reclining on the sofa in the gallery of paintings, reading a book upside down. Rapunzel watched him. She wanted to touch him and smooth away the crease in his brow. She wanted to tell him what she had realized. She wanted to cry to him and have him help her. Thirteen months had been enough. Her mouth was pursed in a small frown as she surveyed her maternal grandfather’s portrait.

She stood in front of the portrait, staring into her ancestor’s eyes, and dared him. He did not make the same choice she wanted to. He did not have the same life experience she did either. She was not wrong. She was right. She knew what was happening to her, before her eyes. She would not let it happen to her again. Not twice in her life. Once had been enough. She did not need to be ruled again. 

Is this—? “Yes. It is,” she whispered.

Eugene cocked his head, eyes turning to her. “What?”

Rapunzel offered him a small smile, though she knew it looked insincere. Eugene’s eyes held that worried quality that they always had when they looked at her lately. 

“Come on.” She steeled herself and took his hands. She could feel the guards’ eyes on them. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

Eugene nodded and led them out of the gallery, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “You want somewhere just for us, blondie?” 

She made a noise of assent. Eugene rubbed his chin teasingly. “Hm, now where oh where will we find that? I’m just a kept man, you know. You can’t expect much from me.”

Rapunzel giggled. Off they went. Within five minutes, Rapunzel found herself secreted behind a tapestry in a passage she hadn’t known existed. It was dark, but not oppressively so. Comfortably warm and private and filled with Eugene’s presence, she loved it. 

They could not see each other’s faces, but that hardly seemed to matter. Instead they leaned into each other, comfortably close, in a way they had not dared to under the watchful eyes of the palace’s guards. Her arms were wrapped around Eugene’s waist, her head resting on his chest. His arms encircled her back, hugging her tight to him, and his hand cradled her head. It was the most at ease she had felt in months. Tucking his head over hers, he waited for her to speak. 

She burrowed further into him. “I missed you.”

“I was right there the whole time. I’m always here.”

Rapunzel nodded. “I know.”

They stayed quiet for a few minutes, before Rapunzel finally spoke. “I think it’s happening again.”

“It?” Eugene asked.

“When—” She paused, deliberately taking a moment, “Mother imprisoned me in that tower, that’s what everyone says. Mother imprisoned me and I was stuck there and told what to do and what to think and—that’s what everyone says. I was imprisoned. But everyone also says that now I’m free.” She paused again, taking a shuddering breath against Eugene’s chest. “And that’s not true. I am just as imprisoned here as I was there. I kept asking myself whether this is the same. Is this like with Mother? Is this the tower? Is this the same? And it is. I got three days of freedom, Eugene. I want more.”

Eugene pressed his face into her hair, eyes closed tightly. He shifted, taking her more firmly into her arms. Rapunzel waited, shaking slightly in the dark of the passage.

Finally, Eugene lifted his head and whispered, “I am about to steal the most valuable thing I’ve ever stolen.”

Rapunzel’s heart lifted, a dangerous hope rising in her chest. “What are you about to steal?”

“You.”


End file.
